Quodlibets of the Viennese Theater

The quodlibet genre was significant in Viennese theater during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Quodlibets are important for two reasons: they reflect the ironic intertextuality of Viennese life, and they present a cross-section of music of many genres and styles that was most familiar to the theatergoing audience. This edition includes three works—Die travestierte Ariadne auf Naxos (ca. 1799), a one-act melodrama with spoken and sung sections, Rochus Pumpernickel (1809), a three-act play with musical numbers, and “Das beliebte Quodlibet” from Der Eheteufel auf Reisen (1821), a medley—that represent different times and styles, tracing the history of the genre. Ariadne auf Naxos, a parody of the 1775 Brandes/Benda melodrama, borrows the original text almost completely, but replaces Benda's music with comical melodies drawn from the Vienna Volkstheater and adds a happy ending. Rochus Pumpernickel, with a story based on Molière and twenty-seven musical numbers, was the most successful of all the full-length quodlibet plays; the high-brow periodical Der Sammler paid it the back-handed compliment of saying that its author “writes for the box office, not for immortality.” With music ranging from Mozart and Haydn to Méhul, Salieri, Weigl, Wenzel Müller, and anonymous folksong, it offers a rich assortment of material familiar and unfamiliar to modern scholars. Dance music plays a significant role, so this play also opens a window on the Viennese dance world. The medley “Das beliebte Quodlibet” combines opera, folksong, and Tyrolerlied into a quasi-political jab at the police state. The edition provides literal English translations of all the texts, and the two full-length works also include performable translations underlaid in the music. An extensive commentary section identifies musical sources and discusses how pieces are reinterpreted in their new contexts.